West Palm Club Deserves Some Respect

JASON KNAPFEL LOCAL SCENE

July 30, 2004|JASON KNAPFEL LOCAL SCENE

South Florida is in many ways a microcosm of Western culture. South Beach is reality TV's facade. Boca embraced nip and tuck before it became a show. And finally, it's where many of us come to spend our golden years.

For those of us searching for something more than the sports bar around the corner, there is a little place in West Palm Beach that took its name from an XTC song that harbored our disenfranchisement. While venues, one after the next, collapsed in failure for one reason or another, this one has survived our culture's thirst for the next trend.

But it may have met its match.

Respectable Street (518 Clematis St., West Palm Beach; 561-832-9999) is the grandfather of South Florida alternative music culture. But it was recently threatened with closing by city officials, according to club owner Rodney Mayo. The suspicion is that he is being squeezed out by the higher scale development such as CityPlace and new condominiums surrounding Clematis Street.

Respectable Street is one of the few remaining venues in the area that cater to local and national touring rock acts. The fear is that this doesn't fit into the grand scheme of things, and that the powers that be will find a way to make Mayo's life uncomfortable. He has claimed to have been singled out for inspections.

The main bone of contention is enforcing age restrictions (21 and older) for downtown clubs. While some may think this is a nice way to keep kids from getting in trouble, in reality it could significantly hinder the ability to court national touring acts and leave kids with one more excuse to get in trouble out of boredom.

The issue is being put to a vote by the city commissioners next week. The decision will determine whether clubs can have an exemption for live shows.

Clematis is a tale of two cities. The east side has the glitzier clubs. The west side, just north of CityPlace, is where Respectable Street lies. It's also the location of another club owned by Mayo, The Lounge (517 Clematis St., West Palm Beach; 561-655-9747).

Wednesday nights are a far cry from what I saw as the area's heyday of the early '90s. When I arrived for a show at The Lounge at about 9 p.m., the sound checks echoed up and down the near vacant street. And while traffic did heat up much later in the evening, where were all the young people -- the people who support new music?

Maybe the city would prefer a more homogenized downtown. But the mold was broken when who or whatever made the rapper known as The Show is the Rainbow. Nebraskan Darren Keen seemed to be a bundle of nerves before the show, wondering how the crowd would take him. And he had good reason for his concern. But once he grabbed the mike, he enjoyed pushing people's buttons. Hardly the image of your typical MC, the white, bearded and rotund rapper looked like Jack Black dressed in a red jumpsuit.

PC, he was not. The audience stood bewildered as free-form rapping machine Keen danced, pranced and jumped on the bar rhyming about his sexual proclivities and anything else that seemed to come to mind.

The night took a 180 as Brit poppers El (formerly known as Sevens) took to the small corner stage. Their major-label-ready CD is in the can and should be available soon.

Last came Jared Flamm, an ex-patriot of Coral Springs, and his newly formed band Birdie. They now call L.A. home, but made West Palm Beach a stop on their short summer tour.

They, quite frankly, stole the show. The first few numbers sounded like a "feeling out" process, which is to be expected since they have only played a handful of shows together. When they really got the ball rolling you could tell that this was something with real potential.

Their sound falls somewhere between modern acts such as Magnetic Fields and Bright Eyes. The latter is especially evident in Flamm's slightly quivering vocal delivery. As the night progressed, their harmonies (all five members sing!) sounded even more comfortable.

So the question remains whether 18- to 20-year-olds will be able to patronize downtown venues. Maybe someday the live sounds on this street will be silenced. But I at least got one more chance to see and hear something worthwhile.